de humani corporis fabrica
by Pasticcino
Summary: Renaissance horror-fic. Italy learns the importance of anatomy in art. Contains gore.


Something new was happening and Feliciano could feel it in his veins, could feel it in his blood. This was truly a new age, something great and wonderful and he just felt the need to /create/ something, but something was wrong, suddenly his paintings and sculptures just didn't feel good enough anymore. They weren't realistic enough, they were off somehow, and now there was a new book out by a man named Vesalius, and it was creating a lot of buzz in Florence.

Feliciano shuffled home with his copy, it was a bright and sunny day, but the Italian didn't dare use the book to block out the sun. He could feel it was something /special/. The man selling them had looked at him strangely, saying it wasn't really appropriate for a /child/, especially a child of the church, but Feliciano had puffed out his cheeks and pulled out enough money with his chubby little hands, hands that could barely reach to the counter, and suddenly it didn't matter how old he was, because money was a very adult language and Feliciano knew how to speak it.

* * *

When he finally reached his house, he ran in and sprawled across the floor, flipping the book open and letting his fingers run over the detailed illustrations lightly. Of course, he'd seen some anatomical work from Da Vinci, but he was ahead of his time, and while it had been beautiful, it hadn't inflamed the Italian's passion like this work did now. This was what his art needed, this was the realism he was missing.

Feliciano ran to grab some charcoal and paper, carefully copying the detailed image of a dissected heart. How could he properly draw someone in love if he didn't know the details of the beating heart inside them? If he didn't understand the way the blood circulated throughout the body when a person's passions were inflamed? But…something was still missing. He wasn't the type of artist that just copied things, he needed to /see/ them, he needed to /feel/ them and study the different angles and lighting, but how could he do that with the insides he couldn't see? It wasn't the same as going out to the market and studying the people walking by, the way they move their arms and tipped their hats. No, this was something very different.

There were medical lectures of course, but it would be difficult to get in and even more difficult to see clearly, for even the medical schools didn't regularly dissect bodies and the rare times they did were overcrowded by students who couldn't see what was happening half of the time anyway. He needed to think of something else…

* * *

It was several days later, the dark of night had overtaken the city and Feliciano had snuck out to the graveyard on the hill. Not the church's graveyard, no that was /holy/ ground, but the one where they threw the criminals in that mass grave, the one where the bodies would still be fresh from that public hanging earlier in the day. Feliciano didn't know much about dissections, but he had some idea that he'd want something fresh, he was drawing the /living/ after all, and he wanted the corpse to be as close as possible. He recalled that signore Da Vinci had once dissected the body of a man that died in front of him, but Feliciano wasn't sure if he'd have the stomach for that…

Of course, no price was too high for art, not to Feliciano. He pulled out the bag that he brought with him, placing it on the little wooden cart that he used when he went to the market. The stench was awful. No doubt the bodies on top were fresh, but the ones below them… He scrunched up his nose, and pushed the sleeves up on his robes, maybe he shouldn't have worn white…

And he pulled and pushed the body onto the cart, grateful that these at least had no open wounds, but that was another upside to using a hanged man, the ones here wouldn't have died from a plague and were, for the most part, in rather good physical shape. Feliciano had always had a great aesthetic appreciation for strong muscles, and he was sure he'd draw them even better now that he'd be able to see just what they looked like underneath!

* * *

He laid the bag out in the cellar, having had to drag it down the steps, and hoping that they hadn't left any bruising. Of course, he wasn't really sure how that would actually effect the insides, but he did have those illustrations to compare it to in case the damage was too bad! He lit the candle in the corner, hoping it would give enough light for him to see what he was doing. The room was always so scary when it was dark and late like this… The Italian let out a small whine as the fire hit his finger, pouting at the matchstick like it might somehow feel guilty and apologize to him, before throwing it in the bin by the table.

Tears in his eyes, Feliciano unzipped the bag, his burned pinky stuck in his mouth as he pulled the corpse out and laid it flat on the floor. The skin felt so cold, it was strange, like touching ice. Seeing it like this, stretched out under the soft glow of the candlestick… It almost seemed like the man was sleeping… And he was so much bigger than him! A large plopping sound filled the room as he took his pinky out of his mouth, placing his hand palm to palm with the dead man's. Feliciano started comparing the long fingers to his own much chubbier ones, the cool skin helping to alleviate the pain of his burn as he lightly tapped his fingers against it.

He bit his lip and glanced over to the smaller bag he'd brought down earlier. He was letting himself get distracted, and he only had so much time before it was daylight and people would be coming over! He needed to focus on the specific instead of the composition as a whole, the subject wasn't his painting after all, well not the outside of him at least.

He grabbed onto the sharp scalpel, deciding to make his first cut right in the middle. He was surprised how easy it went in, and further surprised by the lack of blood flow. But that was how it worked wasn't it? The heart wasn't beating anymore, and the veins got all dried up. There were a few pools of blood in various places as he kept cutting, tongue poked out in concentration, and little fingers running along the insides as he tried to get all the pieces /out/. It felt like a beautiful puzzle he'd never get back together again…

* * *

Bloodstained fingers grabbed charcoal as he eventually began to sketch the pieces he had. It was beautiful, so beautiful. Before long it was daylight. Torturous daylight. Oh, and what was he supposed to do with this disassembled body now? He hadn't planned that part, had he? Maybe he could leave it… The priests would find it, yes, but the church had seen its fair share of horrors, invisible skeletons in invisible closets. No, his real concern was where he might find a woman's body for tomorrow night…


End file.
